A note of warning for those who saw or heard about C4’s Trillion Pound Horror Story. It’s a three part series commissioned by C4.
A word of caution. The producer was Martin Durkin. A few years ago he made a series also for C4 called Against Nature which compared environmentalists to Nazis and was so egregiously misleading that C4 was forced to make an on air apology. Had anyone misrepresented interviewees as purposefully as he was found to have done, but done it to someone from the right wing, they would have never worked again. Durkin however, has powerful friends. He returned a few years later to make ‘ The Great Global Warming Swindle’ which was similarly biased.
Durkin has close ties to Frank Furedi and the Living Marxism bunch. You can read more about those links and who those people are here. He has other friends you can’t read about.
So having claimed global warming is all a load of nonsense and said environmentalists are like Nazis (he really did make the comparison), now he does the banker’s work. Look at all this public debt! Yes look over here ladies and gentlemen, that’s right over here away from the evidence about the banking carnage and bail outs. And claims also that the whole bail out thing will only cost a few tens of billions if that. Breezing past numerous very detailed studies including government ones saying 1.4 trillion is more like it.
Do a bit of reading about Durkin and his cohorts before you take anything he says at face value.
I watched it, foolishly thinking that it might be a study of how we got into the Great Recession, perhaps asking some searching questions of our MPs.
But it soon became apparent I was watching Chicago school, pro-privatisation lobbying. Worse still, it was as if even Durkin himself couldn't be bothered to put together more than a half-arsed argument. So I switched it off, just thinking a little less of Channel 4.
Mind you, I got as far as 10 mins from the end. Surely the UK record?
Certainly a manly effort. Though probably not good for you in the long run.
Yup! More opportunistic hobby-horse riding from Durkin, I'm afraid.
A little info on the Furedi/Fox axis for anyone whose interested.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n13/jenny-turner/who-are-they
w/v: sioushi… Native American finger food?
I made it to 15 minutes from the end. The 1.4 trillion figure was quoted in the programme, but then he added on the shortfall in public sector pension funds, taking it to 4.8 trillion (if I recall correctly).
This programme is a huge distraction, but, unfortunately, we cannot ignore it. People will ask questions.
Dubious credibility of Mr Durkin is a start.
I'd almost forgotten about this lot. Once went for a job in a digital agency in clerkenwell, between the first and second, did some research on the directors and they were connected to LM, first time I'd ever heard of them. Didn't go back for the second interview.
I was horrified by this naked piece of propaganda not because it exists but that Channel 4 broadcast it without indicating just how one sided it was and what neo con logic was used. The lowpoint of using the panel of Kevin McKensie, Vanessa Feltz and someother dimwit to playact interrogating the Public services took my breath away. It would make anyone who looks seriously at this stuff ill and I stopped being able to face watching at that point but then I suspect its intended target is not the informed… This a an early shot in the new info wars which are bound to erupt.
Gah – knew it would be bad but didn't realise it was made by that slimy serial truth distorter.
Will definitely give it a miss.
Thanks for the heads up.
Ah yes, Channel 4's dedication to the cause of giving ideologues free reign to 'provoke debate'. I turned it on when they had children set up with placards shouting (something like) 'What do we want? Fiscal Responsibility! When do we want it? This financial year!' – which I thought was quite amusing. But it quickly became less and less amusing.
One claim seems central to the market ideologues: that the public sector ONLY exists thanks to the private: that all money that the state spends derives from taxes imposed on the good old, struggling, free market. Now it's true, as they say, that the Chancellor doesn't have a pot of gold in his back garden that he dips into; it's even true that the private sector does produce the cash which supports health, education, miltary spending, etc. And it seems to me that anyone on the left needs to be able to rebut this charge that society is entirely paid for by the cash raised in the private sector. So here's my contribution to a decent answer…
Ok, money doesn't grow on public sector trees, but where does 'money' come from in the private sector – how does it come into being? The fact is that pro-capitalists don't have an easy answer to this question, preferring to think of money as something natural, which does somehow grow on private sector trees.
The answer is that money has to have a source, wherever it's generated, and the source of money has to lie in something that is valuable in itself. And that is labour. And this is supported by the recent crisis: the money that has been lent and lost, turned into an asset and speculated upon, is only going to be redeemed by demanding it from the general population and their labour. So we arrive at a society where life is experienced as debt peonage, where we labour to pay the (odious) debts said to already have been incurred.
If we equate money with the value of labour (Marx would say, alienated labour), then it's possible to feel more comfortable about people like doctors, teachers, policemen, civil servants, etc.; the people who teach our children and help us recover from illness are producing value through their labour; they're also investing value in the future labour of those they care for. Because personally, I wouldn't feel comfortable trying to tell the teacher of my child that she is a parasite, performing a 'non-job' that is only made possible by the beneficence of the heroic private sector. Rather, I would say that it is the existence of the roles of educators, healers, administrators, etc. that establish the conditions of possibility for a society in which the private sector also has a productive role to perform. But I refuse to make the work that is done in the public sector subordinate to and dependent upon work that is done by the state. In fact, the relationship works the other way around.
Hi Benek99, the argument's a little more nuanced than Public Sector Good Vs Public Sector Bad.
and I've just been having a peruse of http://www.godhatesliberals.com and I can't find anyone, even on there, who describes teachers as parasites performing non-jobs.
We all need to engage in a dialogue about the future of this country. Strawmen just get in the way though.
Apologies for my tone, I tried to couch it in more affable terms and had a few rewrites but they just disguised the point I was trying to make; so I deleted them and stuck to the point.
Yours, more affably than it might appear, Unclear.
Hello Unclear. Which argument's a little more nuanced, the argument that needs to be had, or the one in the Channel 4 documentary? Cos the latter did devote an entire section to claiming over and over again that there was no such thing as money that wasn't produced by the private sector; and that, therefore, all public sector spending was only made possible by the productivity of private capitalism. If you don't believe me, watch it again. It's about a third of the way through as I recall.
It's true that the documentary didn't say that schoolteachers were parasites, but it did present an ideological view of the economy in which all state spending was subservient to private business; and it's this view of society that is in place, and by which we take advice on fiscal responsibility from banks, and cost-cutting advice from businessmen who avoid paying tax. From this position, it's a short step from describing Equality and Diversity officers as parasitic non-jobs (as the Channel 4 documentary did), to claiming that teaching assistants are also examples of the 'bloated' state sector, etc. etc. Given the fact that the govt. teaching grant for HE has just been slashed from £5000 / student to £0 / student in the Humanities also implies that teaching literature or philosophy or art is only justifiable if it can produce financial value.
So I wouldn't accept the accusation that I'm building a straw man argument.
Look forward to a response.
Hi Benek99,
The one to be had.
"One claim seems central to the market ideologues…"
"The fact is that pro-capitalists don't have an easy answer to this question…"
Your original comment started out addressing the documentary but soon broadened into an attack on all 'market idealogues' and 'pro-capitalists', i.e. the vast majority of the population.
So I'm going for a version of 2.3. Presenting someone who defends a position poorly as the defender, then refuting that person's arguments — thus giving the appearance that every upholder of that position (and thus the position itself) has been defeated.
P.s. I originally started with, 'Hi Benek99, the one to be had.'- Which didn't read right at all. As ever, Unclear.
Yes: I think the vast majority of the population isn't able to give a decent answer to the question: "Where does money come from?" That's because it's a philosophical question that poses the metaphysical status of money in a capitalist society which prefers to see it as part of nature.
The claim that the private sector stands above and has a paternalistic attitude to the public sector IS a central claim to market ideologues. It's an assumption that stands behind pretty much every talking head featured on the documentary, and which is the foundation for current tabloid attacks on benefits and non-jobs.
Are you trolling behind that polite demeanor?
I never troll behind a polite demeanour.
You may be correct that the vast majority of the population isn't able to give a decent answer to the question: "Where does money come from? That doesn't make your answer right (or wrong); it simply drives a wedge between the two.
There are very few free market idealogues who argue that a public sector is not necessary. Those that don't are often termed anarchists of some kind e.g. anarcho-capitalists. I've never met one, I guess they must be a fairly select fringe bunch. You're anchoring your argument by refuting an extreme view.
Most of the public would say something along the lines of, "Some private sector spending is necessary, too much is a bad thing." Most would struggle to identify what "too much" is and what the "bad thing" would turn out to be; but if they were to answer, "7m and an unsustainable economy" they'd chime with me.
If we are allowed a debate on the future of the public sector, we will need to decide: what is essential, what is beneficial but expendable if push comes to shove and what is a waste of space.
For me, currently, most of HE falls into category 2 (I should be more loyal I suppose) and the Equality & Diversity officers I share an office with, fall into Cat3.
But I'm open to persuasion, which is why I like to read Golem's and Denninger's and others' thoughts, buy the Guardian but read the Telegraph on-line etc, etc…
Yours transpicuously, Unclear.
Can't tell you both how much I'm enjoying reading this. Thank you both.
I'll respond to what I see as your two principal points:
"There are very few free market idealogues who argue that a public sector is not necessary. Those that don't are often termed anarchists of some kind e.g. anarcho-capitalists. I've never met one, I guess they must be a fairly select fringe bunch. You're anchoring your argument by refuting an extreme view."
I agree with you, but perhaps not as you might think. There is an observable tradition in the UK of appealing to precisely the view that the public sector is not necessary; this was put forward in the realm of political theory by the libertarian right, Nozick et al., adopted by Thatcher, and expounded in her famous dictum that "there is no such thing as society".* My gloss on events: Blair's Labour party continued an ideological attachment to 'marketised solutions', but what we're seeing now is a return to a more naked libertarianism re. public spending; see for example today's announcement that cuts to living allowances will not harm people because private landlords are 'probably' going to lower rents accordingly, but if not, the individual can always move house. (Here we see the two essential concepts of the libertarian right: the responsive market and the rational consumer.) But, of course, and as Golem's blog has made abundantly clear, these market-ideological (and I don't treat this as a dirty word, there's an ideology of the left as well) justification of spending cuts only apply to spending on public infrastructure and welfare (HE and living allowances, for example). There has been massive expenditure of public funds on protecting speculative investment, ie. banks. and their backers. In other words, there are large sectors of the economy for which the state stands as guarantor – and this is of course defended as being in the public interest. So the traditional idea of the small state is a lie – a state which can raise billions of pounds to safeguard private investment is not small at all, and is very willing to intervene in markets. That's why, to return to your point, I agree that there are very few market ideologues who believe the a public sector is not necessary; for it serves to dress the state and validate its self-appointed power to raise taxes, upon which the private economy depends.
[…]
[part 2]
"If we are allowed a debate on the future of the public sector, we will need to decide: what is essential, what is beneficial but expendable if push comes to shove and what is a waste of space."
In my second post, I didn't actually say that there was a prevailing view that the public sector was unnecessary, rather that it was portrayed as dependent upon and subservient to the private sector's ability to generate 'real' money.** It's a question of the relation, not that one sector wants to other to disappear (which I was trying to show in the paragraph above), and this relation is what I called paternalistic. I think you're buying into this relation when you use phrases like "beneficial but expendable if push comes to shove" – in other words, your phrasing treats the economic crisis as unavoidable, as the immutable circumstances from which public spending decisions must be made. Public spending has to accommodate the 'realities' of the economy, such as the 'need' to have spent a trillion or so bailing out or insuring the banks against losses (scare quotes because I can't treat the terms at face value, not because I'm quoting you). My view is that we have to start refusing the logic of necessity that presumes the protection of private investment as a given; categories such as odious debt might be helpful in this task.
Best,
Ben.
* I once tried to source this statement; it apparently came from an interview she did for a a woman's magazine; I find it quite funny that the most pithy utterance of a political philosophy originated in this type of source.
** And on all my posts on this thread, I never made a statement that could be read as implying this view on the part of ideolouges of the free market. So I would say that the “extreme view” that you say I am putting forward as a straw man, is actually an extreme view that you are attributing to me; hence the suspicion of trolling.
* She was discussing child cruelty; saying it wasn't down to 'Society' but people; although she said something similar on a different subject.
Anyway, we digress…
Do you think (free) market idealogues are in favour of bank bailouts? Denninger, ZeroHedge etc.
There's a dissertation in here about whether some private enterprise, running scared of the effect of a banking sector meltdown, are shedding their free market ideology while self-preservation is the uppermost motive. These are exceptional times.
My view: whatever happens with regard to the banks, we are going to face an extraordinary contraction in the economy. Either a) we allow the banks to detonate or b) we dismember ourselves to keep them alive. Either option will result in severe cutbacks in Govt spending.
Then there's the question of whether recent Govt tax income is a bubble itself, following the lending/construction/housing/consumerism bubbles that have yet to properly go pop.
Who knows? It may never happen.
As ever, Unclear.
While producing my previous response I was trying to type and do something else at the same time, neither very well.
** You do meet (on-line and real-life) who rail against the State sector and come out with statements such as you allude to. But in my experience, any interaction with these people soon turns into a version of What have the Romans ever done for us? What people say before and after engaging the brain are often only loosely connected.
I really struggled to come up with a good analogy for the State spending argument above.
Something that has the essential message that by evading the the really bad thing we still get snagged by the quite bad thing. If you can get in something about how our leaders would be happier that the really bad thing happened to us because if we evade the really bad thing, a really bad thing happens to them, that would be peachy.
Yours fruitfully, Unclear.
I have a wonderful story that happened to me this week, I don't think the dude will be reading this so i think I'm safe. It arrived yesterday so I'll continue..
I've been looking for a drum trigger and found one on ebay on sunday. I mailed the guy and asked for a buy it now price. The mail exchange went like this.
"I don't know, what are you prepared to pay?" he said.
"In the spirit of Life of Brian i will give you 60 sheckles for the gourd" i said.
"How about £10 plus postage?"
"This really feels like the Life of Brian! I wish i had a fake beard. That seems awfully cheap. New they're £100 so £60 seems like a reasonable offer, remember when haggling you have to give a higher figure"
"Yes I've seen them for that new how about £25 plus postage?"
"Deal send me an invoice"
I'm not making it up, I know i'm soft, I should have gone for the £10 plus postage, but it's that sort of attitude that got us in this mess isn't it.
One Love
I think it was Bill Drummond who did an art show and had a 'special offer' on his prints: £10 each or two for £25.